The Cruelest Truth
by Rjalker
Summary: There was one lesson Curie had yet to learn about being human. (Rated T for violence, contains character death)
Curie didn't know how to act at a funeral.

She didn't know how she was supposed to react, didn't know what she was supposed to say, didn't know she was supposed to _do_.

When she had lost her friends, she hadn't been human. She had...she had missed them, but…

But it wasn't the same. CVRIE hadn't felt grief. Not really, not like she did now.

CVRIE had simply done as Dr. Collins asked of her. She found suitable containers for their bodies, because there was no room to build a funeral pyre, she placed their belongings atop them, and she kept the candles burning.

She had continued her work, alone.

And she had been alone until the day she heard a strange sound outside the lab, almost like the skitter of the molerats moving about, yet different.

Wondering if one of the offspring of the molerats had developed a mutation that would lead to further their evolution, she had moved to the window to observe the phenomenon.

And CVRIE had floated there, and watched, perplexed, as the strange creature that was Dogmeat jumped up so that his front paws were on the glass, his tail wagging, his head tilted to the side, smiling what she now knew was a happy smile, but then had only noted as a high level of energy.

She had known what dogs were, of course. Dr. Collins had told her, had drawn her pictures. He had had a dog, before he had to flee to the safety of the vault. A stray that he had found wandering the roads, that he had taken in and named Marie. But she had never seen one for herself, and it was a struggle to connect what her visual sensors were picking up to the stylized, somewhat crude image Dr. Collins had created for her.

CVRIE had stared at Dogmeat, trying to analyze his shape and form to determine how susceptible he would be to the diseases the molerats carried, and Dogmeat had stared at her, his tail wagging as though he were the happiest creature in the world, for over a minute before a new sound registered in her sensors.

Footsteps.

Human footsteps.

Slow and hesitant, but approaching nonetheless.

Dogmeat had turned his face away from her to point at the sound, and he had let out an excited bark. She now understood that he had done so to explain that CVRIE posed no threat. Then, she hadn't understood it at all.

But even then, she had been able to see the fear in the face of the woman who had stepped out of the darkness.

She was thin, and her vault suit was torn in several places, and her sharp sensors had picked up the miniscule marks that were the entry points of Stimpak needles clustered in a patch of missing cloth on the woman's left shoulder.

Even then, even as CVRIE and not Curie, she had been able to recognize fear and worry. She had seen it on the faces of her colleagues as they expired, one by one, as the years passed, until she was the only one left.

That was the first expression she had seen on Sloan's face. The first stance she had seen her body in. Her steps were slow, cautious, a knife clutched in her right hand, ready to be used at the first sign of danger.

Curie now realized that Sloan hadn't trusted her. Sloan had thought she was going to try to kill her.

But CVRIE had only one...thought...on her mind. Only one objective she wished to complete.

All of her hard work, all the decades of solitude and failure, and she had finally completed her mission. The cure for a thousand diseases, the hope for a thousand despairs. Only one dose left, the only one to survive the decades of decomposition that had destroyed the others.

Sloan had released her from the lab. She had lied-that, Curie understood now, too, but she couldn't even gather a single shred of herself to be outraged by it, because it didn't matter-and CVRIE had watched her disposition relax once she asked that the cure be brought to those who needed it.

That was how she met Sloan Bree. In the darkness of a crumbling forgotten Vault, a woman traumatized and wary and battle-worn, but determined to save the life of a child she had only met that day.

And now Curie-not CVRIE, not anymore, and never again-stood in the rain, her hood pulled up to keep it out of her eyes, staring down at the grave Jonah, Tomas, and Kay had dug.

She hadn't known what to do. She didn't know that the new customs humans had developed since the bombs demanded that they bury their dead. Gone were the days where all those who died were cremated to reserve space in the ground for buildings and farms. Now wood was too rare a resource to expend on a body, as needed as it was simply for keeping warm and building proper shelters.

They had returned to the old ways, buying the bodies six feet under the ground so that animals wouldn't get at them, so that they could safely return to the Earth, returning the life they had borrowed so that new trees could grow, and new children be born.

That was how Kay had explained it, when Curie demanded in a rage to know why they weren't building the pyre Dr. Collins had been so upset to be without.

Sloan had only just set up the radio beacon in Hangman's Alley when she left on her own to find more of the materials they required to build a proper settlement. They needed oil and circuitry to set up defensive turrets, they needed copper wire to build lights so that they weren't plunged into darkness when the sun set, they needed more seeds to grow enough food to feed those that would surely follow the beacon seeking safety and a home.

Curie had stayed behind. Kay and Tomas had managed to dig deep enough to break through to one of the old sewer pipes, and Curie had been the one to realize that the dirty rainwater it was overflowing with could be purified with only a bit of effort and ingenuity.

It had been getting steadily darker as the sun set and storm clouds blew in, but the few lights they had set up the day before had been bright enough that Curie was confident they could continue working into the night, and Kay and Tomas were more than eager to finish the project as quickly as they could.

They'd been setting up the last of the piping for the purifier when Jonah-a newcomer, in that moment, a stranger-came stumbling in through the door they had left open to let the fumes of the sewer escape, terrified and out of breath.

And he told them of what he had seen-the woman fighting a hoard of supermutants on her own with just a knife as her only defence, a wound in her side pouring blood.

She had shouted at him to run when she saw him, and he had recognized her voice from the radio beacon he had been following.

Curie had been prepared to go alone. She had the blaster she and Sloan had found in the wreckage of a strange, crashed ship, she had Darknife, the counterpart to Sloan's Saberfang, and she had the combat armour that had been bought from the armoury of the Brotherhood of Steel itself.

She had faced Supermutants before. She knew what they were capable of, she knew the horror of fighting them.

But Kay and Tomas, and even Jonah, as frightened as he was, refused to hear it. Tomas dismantled the turrets they already had set up while Curie helped Kay and Jonah equip the spare pieces of armour Sloan had left in the drawers of the workbench just for such a situation, and it was only a few minutes later that the four of them set out, she wielding the blaster she knew could disintegrate and enemy in as little time as a minute, they lugging the turret heads that Sloan had modified from miniguns in the first place.

They were still operable when used by hand, and Curie knew that for all their strength, even a Supermutant couldn't withstand the firepower of such a weapon.

They moved as quickly as they could, and when Curie finally caught sight of the fires of Faneuil Hall, she gave the others a few orders-stay together, keep the miniguns pointed at the enemy, and watch each other's backs, she would return to them as quickly as she could-and three stimpaks each-she ran ahead, Darknife clutched in her hand, the dark green of her armour helping her blend in with the flickering shadows.

And...that was when she saw Sloan.

She had been expecting to find a lot of things when she arrived on the scene.

She had expected to see Sloan charging at the enemy with reckless abandon, as she had more and more often done since she delved into the memories of the mercenary Conrad Kellogg.

She had expected to see Sloan high atop a pile of rubble, taking out the super mutants one by one with the sniper rifle she had quickly grown fond of, or even just grenades.

She had expected to see Sloan slowly but surely decimated the camp of man-eaters, covered in blood and bruises but smiling a breathless, bloody smile anyways when she saw that Curie had come to help her.

But that wasn't the scene Curie walked into.

Because Sloan was lying on the ground, and she wasn't moving.

And two Supermutants stood over her, both of them holding one of her arms, just starting to step backwards so that they could rip her apart into pieces small enough to fit into the chain bags they kept their food in.

Some sound escaped her that Curie couldn't repeat even if she wanted to, and the next thing she knew, one of the Supermutants poised to rip her beloved's arm off was collapsing into a puddle of glowing blue, and the other was turning too slowly to face her, his big hands still wrapped around one of Sloan's as he struggled to comprehend the sudden death of his companion.

Curie slashed him across the throat. Darknife's serrated edge cut through his thick artery with ease, and he staggered back, eyes wide in pain and horror, one hand clutching at his torn neck in disbelief.

She stabbed him again-this time though the top of his skull when he struggled to stay on his feet-and he jerked once before falling to the ground, dead before he even hit the dirt his blood was soaking into and mixing with the rain.

Curie ran to Sloan's side, and skidded to a stop in the mud and blood that had formed a pool around her beloved.

But it wasn't just the Supermutant's blood that was now soaking into her knees. It was Sloan's, too.

The wound in her side was not the shallow cut Curie had imagined when Jonah told her that Sloan was under attack. It was huge, and deep.

Far too deep.

She could see the sick glisten of organs in the flickering firelight and flashes of lightning overhead.

Everything after that was a blur.

She remembered screaming, and crying, and a few terrible moments where Sloan woke up, and tried to speak.

Blood had gurgled in her torn lungs, and Curie would never forget the look of absolute agony that had been in her beloved's ice colored eyes as she stared up into Curie's face as she leaned over her to shield her from the rain.

But there hadn't been anytime to help her. They hadn't been time to give her a stimpak, or even bandage her wound. One of the mutant hounds that guarded the Supermutant's camp had spotted her, and it sounded the alarm before she could silence it.

Supermutants and hounds poured out of the building, screaming their war cries and insults, and in the distance, Curie heard Kay and Jonah and Tomas join the fight.

Curie could remember one of the mutant hounds collapsing into a puddle even as it continued to skid towards them, the momentum from its run pushing it forward even after it was dead.

She could remember speaking to Sloan, begging her to hold on, repeating hopeless promises and desperate pleas.

She remembered grabbing one of Sloan's hands-bruising and fragile from the Supermutant's cruel grip-and keeping a hold of it even as she fired her blaster again and again and again into the swarms of enemies that threatened to overwhelm her.

She could remember screaming, overcome with rage more violent and explosive than she had ever felt before, because she could heal Sloan, she could save her, but the Supermutants and their goddamn hounds just kept coming, forcing her to waste time destroying them when she should have been performing first aid.

She remembered that she wasn't even looking when Sloan breathed her last breath. She was too busy shooting a Supermutant suicider before it could step even another foot outside the doors of the building the savages had claimed.

After the blast died down, after the heat of the explosion faded away, the rain and the thunder and the storm were the only sounds to mar the silence Curie felt should have fallen when she turned back to Sloan…

Only to be greeted by blank, staring eyes that saw nothing. Only to be greeted by a pale, unmoving face that would never smile again. Only to be greeted by pale hair that was slowly being stained horribly red from the blood that had soaked into the ground for tens of feet around her. Only to be greeted by lips stained red from internal bleeding, lips that would never shape a laugh, or say Curie's name ever again.

She was greeted by the face of death itself.

Sloan, her beloved, her savior, her friend, was gone.

And Curie was alone.

And now she stared into the empty grave that only the humans had known to dig, knowing that soon, very soon, she would have to help lower Sloan's body into that pit, and she knew that she was expected to say something when they did.

None of the others had known Sloan. Kay had been the first to come to Hangman's Alley, but even she had only spent a few days talking with Sloan before she had to leave to get more materials. Tomas had only been able to spend a few minutes introducing himself before she left, and Jonah's only interaction with her had been when she distracted the Supermutants so he could escape after he wandered into their camp.

There wasn't time enough to gather anyone else, any of Sloan's other friends. They were scattered across the Commonwealth, few and far between that could truly say that they had known her.

Sloan had been kind to all those she met. She wasn't afraid to kill if she needed to, but at every opportunity afforded her, she tried to persuade those she could to drop their weapons, to stop fighting, to let her help them build a better life for themselves and those around them.

She had offered any who would listen a home in one of her settlements, promising that they would have all the food and shelter they needed if only they would stop stealing from others, and instead put their effort into rebuilding the world in safety and peace.

Some of them had listened. Some of them hadn't. Those that had now lived in Jamaica Plain, where Ronnie Shaw helped to show them a better way of living than thievery and murder. She taught them of the Minutemen's history, all their successes and failures, and their simple goal. Make the Commonwealth a safer place for everyone.

Ronnie would have wanted to be there for the funeral. She would have known what to say.

There were so many people that should have been there, standing next to Curie in the rain. So many people that would have known what to say, known what they were supposed to do.

Preston would be devastated when he found out, and Misseur Coddsworth too. Curie got the feeling that Mama Murphy would be deeply upset as well, though she was one of the few people Sloan actually disliked.

And it was only then that Curie remembered the Railroad, and what they had accomplished.

Sloan had made it into the Institute, had gained their trust. She had returned to the surface with their permission, and their blessing. They needed her, just like it seemed like all of the Commonwealth needed her. Just like Curie needed her.

Sloan had never spoken of what she had found down in the Institute's halls, and Curie had never dared to ask if she had found what she was looking for.

And now Sloan was gone, and Curie would never know.

And to the scientists down in the Institute, she would have just left, and never returned. Maybe they would think she had betrayed them, maybe they would think she was too afraid to return. As far as they would ever know, she had simply disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Curie wondered if there would ever be a way to let them know what had happened to her. She wondered if they even deserved to know.

Kay stepped up beside her shoulder. Her hair-like Sloan's, but with the slightest hint of red-was hidden in the folds of the hooded rags she wore, the same patchwork of cloth and fabric that Curie's were made of. The ingenuity of humans would never cease to astound her.

Kay's eyes were brown, as Curie's were brown, as so many people's eyes were brown. Sloan's pale blue ones had been a rarity, commented on by almost everyone they met. The only people they had ever seen with eyes like hers were Ghouls, whose eyes ranged from red to brown, to green to blue, to yellow and even white.

Ghouls were the only ones that remained from before the bombs fell and destroyed most of the world. Back then, Stella, the Ghoul woman who Curie had met in Sanctuary Hills back when she was still CVRIE and had first started travelling with Sloan, had told her, people with blue or green or 'hazel' eyes were a common sight. It was only after the bombs fell that brown became the norm.

"Hey, uh," Kay's voice was soft, as though the quiet were a fragile thing that might easily be broken, "It's almost time. Unless, I mean, unless you want some more…"

Some more time, to think about what she wanted to say, to prepare herself to lower Sloan into the depths of the Earth so that they could cover her with dirt, and hide her from the circling ravros high above.

Curie didn't know what to say, and no amount of time was going to change that.

"No," She whispered, lifting a hand to wipe her red eyes, "No, I will be fine. We can-we can begin."

Kay placed a kind hand on her shoulder, then turned and went back into the small shack they were using to prepare-to prepare the body.

Curie stared up past the trees filled with the hunched black shapes of ravros waiting for a meal they would be denied, at the sky shrouded with rain clouds that hung low enough that she almost imagined she could reach up and brush her fingers against them.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, as she heard the creaking door open behind her, as she knew that Jonah and Kay and Tomas carried out the litter that Sloan's lifeless body rested upon, it seemed to her as her tears began to form anew that the entire world was crying with loss.


End file.
